Remembering Sam Freeman
One of Missoula’s Early Baseball Heroes
In the 1920’s, the Missoulian ran a recurring column called “The Oracle” which was filled with curious, witty, strange and unique bits of random yarn. The Oracle was an unnamed staff writer who took on a host of different quirky topics. Many locals wrote to The Oracle sharing wry observations or passing along unique commentaries. In 1929, The Oracle was told an interesting anecdote about early Missoula baseball legend Sam Freeman under the heading “Believe it or Not”:
“‘Why don’t you tell your customers what Sam Freeman did at Hamilton years ago? Sam hit thirty-two consecutive fouls, every one of which went over the grandstand.’ (Sam Freeman was a colored star who played with various Missoula baseball teams. All of the old timers remember him.)”
It’s a fitting place for such a tale; thirty-two consecutive foul balls is a weirdly unique — and seemingly impossible — occurrence. The known record in Major League Baseball for foul balls hit, after all, is 16 by San Francisco Giant Brandon Belt in 2018 during an historic twenty-one pitch at-bat. But they were not consecutive nor did all fly up and behind the hitter. Belt’s record is limited, however, by the fact that pitch-by-pitch accounts were only routinely collected starting in 1988 leaving open the distinct possibility that the true record is greater than 16.
Because rabid baseball fans are prone to delving deeply into individual statistics and records, the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) published a piece written in 2009 that explored this. The writer, named Ted Turocy, used the collection of known plate appearances to run a statistical model that predicted the likely record of foul balls in a major league at-bat — his model concluded it would be “around 17.” Considering that Freeman’s tale took place in a much earlier era and was an amateur game, it’s hard to know how representative Turocy’s statistics are in this scenario. But it does seem nearly impossible that anyone has ever hit 32 consecutive foul balls, let alone that all of them would be hit backwards over a grandstand.
Yet, despite the apocryphal nature of the tale, the blurb speaks to the enduring impact Sam Freeman had on the collective memory of Missoula and Bitterroot Valley residents. Freeman played his last game in Missoula in 1912, after all. But his name was brought up for decades afterwards.
As well it should have. Freeman played baseball across the state from Butte to Billings among White players from 1895–1912 after playing for the 25th Infantry regimental baseball team from 1892–1895. Not only that, he was an all-around player who was called to field several positions over his career (though catcher was his specialty). He caught balls pitched from major leaguers and played among White athletes who went on to the major leagues. The question of exactly how good Freeman was is restricted by the reality that segregation severely limited his options. But the fact that he was frequently recruited to play amateur baseball around the state with other White players in a time of entrenched racial segregation suggests he at least had the potential to be a professional player, even if it were the minor leagues.
Fort Missoula Photo Quandary Deepens
Researching Freeman brought another element of confusion to the already confusing issue of the provenance of one of the best pictures of Black Fort Missoula soldiers in the archives. This picture, taken by Morton Elrod (whose collection of early Missoula photographs is impressive to behold) is indexed as a photo of the 25th Infantry baseball team with a date of 1902. One of those facts can’t be true as the 25th Infantry were not at Fort Missoula in 1902.
But the mystery deepens when considering the photo appears on page 165 of the book Buffalo Soldier Regiment — History of the Twenty-Fifth United States Infantry, 1869–1926 compiled by John H Nankivell (in the republished version by Bison Books). It’s included in an article written by Master Sergeant Dalbert Green, a 25th Infantry soldier who played for a short time with Freeman, called “History of the 25th Infantry Baseball Teams, 1894 to 1914.”
The photo is captioned as: “The first regimental Baseball Team, 25th Infantry, Fort Missoula, Montana, 1894.” It also lists the surnames of all the players, identifying Freeman as the man in the bottom far left of the photo. The photo does show a catcher’s mask and mitt in front of that player — Freeman played catcher almost exclusively for the 25th Infantry team during his term of service.
The problem with all of this, however, is that, according to Mark Fritch, archives photo curator at the University of Montana’s Mansfield Library, it is definitely a photo taken by Morton Elrod. But Elrod did not come to Missoula to teach at the University of Montana until 1896. Sam Freeman’s service expired in August of 1895. By the time Elrod arrived in Missoula, Freeman was living in Hamilton and was no longer a part of the 25th Infantry team. Elrod did make a journey out West prior to his tenure at the University of Montana and perhaps took this during that trip. But that sounds somewhat implausible.
It definitely seems curious, however, that the photo appears with surnames listed. It’s not clear who provided the names — although one would assume it was Dalbert Green himself. Some of the last names can not be confirmed in a search of enlistment records on Ancestry — but many can and confirm that they were players of the 25th Infantry.
As long as this remains uncertain, it can not be stated definitively that that is a picture of Sam Freeman, making captioning it disappointingly imprecise.
Freeman with the 25th Infantry
Sam Freeman was born in Alexander County, Illinois in 1869.² The names of his parents could not be identified though he indicated in the 1900 census that his dad was born in Tennessee and his mother was born in Alabama.³ It’s not known at what age he started playing baseball and honing his skills. Freeman joined the Army in August of 1890 in St Louis, Missouri and arrived at Fort Missoula in the early Spring of 1891, joining Company H.⁴
It appears Freeman’s first game was as a member of Colonel Samuel Burt’s newly-formed team that lost its first game to a local Missoula team in September of 1892. He was back in 1893 as the 25th Infantry team exacted revenge — to the tune of 36–3 — and was a regularly-named part of the battery in most of the games reported on in that time.
In the early-to-mid-1890’s, playing catcher in the Army was even more challenging than what we see today. It was only in the late 1890’s when padded catcher’s mitts became the norm. Dalbert Green’s history of the 25th’s baseball team gives a sense of the conditions Freeman might have been working with in those early games. In discussing the catcher for his first team in 1893 at Fort Buford, ND — before he joined Company B at Fort Missoula in 1894 — Green wrote:
“In those days no large catcher mitts were in use, only fingered gloves, and throwing gloves for either right or left-handed catchers. Accordingly the life of a catcher was something terrible, and one of the gamiest and scrappiest players that ever donned a baseball suit, Musician Joseph C Smith, Company E, had the pleasure of being a catcher of the Infantry team at that time. The pitcher distance was from 55 to 68 feet, and having speed and a wild demon to handle, Smith’s hands got in such a condition that he couldn’t put a ring on his fingers with a shoe horn.”⁵
Whether or not Freeman played with fingerless gloves for a time is not known. Padded gloves — which can be seen in the Fort Missoula baseball team picture — were only just gaining traction in the late 1890’s so it’s definitely possible Freeman cut his teeth catching balls with far less padding. Either way, despite the pain and dangers of being in the firing line, Freeman played the position to a high level of excellence. He played nearly every game reported on during his time with the 25th Infantry from 1892–1895. He was well-liked and regarded both for his overall skills as a baseball player and his general demeanor. Green’s article referred to Freeman as “one of the classiest players I’ve met in the Army.”⁶
The Missoulian also took notice of Freeman. In one article in 1894, they wrote he was “one of the most gentlemanly players that ever stepped on a diamond” — a rare personal compliment of any of the fort players who were almost never talked about individually. Little in the way of statistics or descriptions of play by Fort teams in that era can be found which makes it difficult to know how impressive Freeman was as a player at the time. His ubiquity as a named part of the catcher-pitcher battery for games played in that era is about as close an indicator as can be gleaned.
Of the 11 games found between 1892 and 1895 when Freeman was with the 25th, he was personally listed as playing in seven of the games. It’s likely he played considerably more games than that as some reporting didn’t name any players. It’s also likely the paper didn’t report on every game that took place. What does seem obvious is that Freeman and Green caught the eye of local baseball fans in the year 1895.
In the last full month of his term of service, Freeman was recruited to play on Missoula’s local nine among other White players. Most notably, Freeman played in a decisive final game of a three-game series against a Spokane team that reportedly were Northwest regional champions. Freeman, being an all-around player, was called to play center field for the team on July 5th after the two teams won a game each the day before. In the rubber match, the Missoula team thumped Spokane 20–8. The series, which took part over the 4th of July holiday of 1895, brought hundreds of spectators and the win was a matter of great pride with the Missoulian giddily reporting on the outcome.
“Missoula has met the enemy and they are our’n. The Spokanes came, they saw and they were conquered. They left the Falls city with drums beating and banners flying. They will slide in our over the back fence on their return today,” lead the article on the front page of the paper. Freeman played a role in the win with the paper calling him out specifically.
“The only change in the make-up of the home team was in center field and behind the rubber,” the Missoulian recounted. “C. Harpster caught while Freeman held down the middle garden. The playing of both men was superb, particularly the stick work of Freeman.”
Later that summer both Freeman and Dalbert Green (who somehow picked up the nickname ‘Mickey’) played in a match-up between the starting local White players and their “second nines” — Green pitching and Freeman catching.
Freeman Plays Baseball Across the State
Freeman was discharged in August of 1895 with an “Excellent” service rating.⁷ At first, it sounded as if he was leaving Montana for good and heading back to his home in Illinois after his service, his departure commented on by both the Missoulian and Ravalli Republic.
But the departure was short-lived. After leaving Missoula that fall, he was recruited by the town of Hamilton to come train and play with their local baseball team arriving there in June of 1896. The team didn’t start until the following year, it appears, but Freeman began to plant roots in Montana. In January of 1897, Freeman’s wife, Sarah, gave birth to their first son which the Helena Independent noted was “the first colored child born in Ravalli County.”
In the Spring of 1897, Freeman was behind the plate for Hamilton where his skills were noted and the team found significant success. In a report on a winning game against Stevensville on May 16th, the paper lavished praise on the team and showed admiration for Freeman’s skills as a catcher.
Freeman’s talent was obviously coveted around the state. His time in Hamilton only lasted a year. By 1898, he was on his way to Butte to find employment as he was being recruited to play ball in the area. That year, Freeman landed a starting spot with the Anaconda team.
For the next several years, he played with local White teams around the state. In 1899 and 1900, he was the catcher for the Helena team where the local paper referred to him as “Uncle Sam Freeman.” One imagines Freeman found a fan base there as Helena had the largest Black population in the state at the time. But in 1901, he had left Helena and was playing for the Butte city team.
In 1902, the Billings baseball team recruited him to play, though it doesn’t appear that he played there longer than a month. It was enough to make an impression. In a game played in Billings on June 15th against Red Lodge, the Gazette commented, “Freeman’s snappy throwing made it suicide for a Red Lodge man to attempt to steal.” And, further down the article, the paper commented that Freeman and the pitcher’s performance “partook of the traditional ‘clock work,’ for regularity and precision.”
It appears Freeman was only in Billings seasonally in 1902. Earlier that year, he’d moved back to Missoula where he was hired to work in the Turkish Bath Parlors of the Rankin Hotel. He even played a game for the local Missoula team as a shortstop before getting the call to play in Billings that summer.
Freeman Comes Back to Missoula
He spent at least the next ten years in Missoula regularly playing with local Missoula, Frenchtown and Bonner baseball teams. Notably, Freeman got to play against a Fort Missoula Buffalo Soldier team — the third battalion of the 24th Infantry — on at least four occasions.
On May 10th, he was the catcher on a quickly-assembled local team that played the 24th Infantry baseball team at the Fort field only to go down to defeat 18–8. On September 27th 1903, Freeman got another chance to play against his fellow Buffalo Soldiers when the local Missoula team faced off against the 24th Infantry squad. The game was a nail-biter with the local Missoula team winning in the 11th inning 9–7.
The dynamics of a former Black soldier playing among White players in a predominantly White town against another Black infantry battalion team must have been an interesting subplot to that tense game; though nothing specific was reported on in the paper.
The following year, on May 30th 1904, Freeman again faced off against the 24th Infantry team. At that point in the season, the Fort team had not lost — winning a reported 14 straight games. They’d beaten the University of Montana team at least three times as well as two games with Bonner and against another local Missoula team organized by prominent businessman P.M. Reilly. The P.M. Reilly team took a 12–0 beating from the 24th Infantry players just a few days before their game with the Missoula Giants (Freeman’s team). Donning the catcher’s mask for the Giants, though, Freeman and the team put a stop to the streak in decisive fashion, winning 15–4.
The 24th Infantry team did exact revenge a week later when they beat Freeman and the local Missoula team 17–13 on June 5th. The Butte Miner reported the game “evened matters up for the defeat that was administered to the soldiers last Sunday by the civilians.”
Later that Summer in 1904, the Missoula Giants took on the professional minor league team from Salt Lake City in a two-game series. And while the team wasn’t expected to win, they did have on their roster center fielder Sheldon Lejeune who went on to play partial seasons in the major leagues with the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Pittsburg Pirates. Freeman and the Giants lost both games 7–2 and 9–0. Freeman did score one of the only two runs put up against the Salt Lake team during the series.
Despite playing for many years among White players, Freeman also was active in recruiting local Black residents to play baseball. In May of 1907, he was the pitcher of an all-Black team called the Night Owls that had a scheduled game against another all-Black team called The Hawthornes (likely named after the The Hawthorne Club, a Black-run bar and social club in downtown Missoula). In an editorial the day before the game, the paper waxed nostalgic about Freeman’s years playing baseball in the state.
The following year, Sam Freeman was back at it, forming another all-Black team. The community had been making an active push that year to promote apple orchard farming in the Bitterroot Valley and a there was an effort made to form a regional “Red Apple League” to aid the boosterism.
Freeman was the first to form a team and named it the McIntosh Reds — the apple variety community leaders were hoping would take off in the Bitterroot Valley. By mid-May, the Reds were ready and arranged for a game against a team fielded by the Western Montana Flouring Company (W.M.F.C.). The red apple promotion was at such a fevered pitch that Freeman’s team secured their very own uniforms from local business leaders.
That same day, Freeman’s McIntosh Reds beat the Western Montana Flouring Company 5–2 in front of a crowd of about 600, according to the paper’s estimate. The article describing the game is illustrative of how, even though the contest was between two Missoula area teams, both the crowd and the paper’s focus favored the play of the White team. Very little was written descriptively about the play of the Reds, with the bulk of the article describing the Flouring Company players’ accomplishments. The account of the final inning — with the McIntosh Reds holding a 3–0 lead — provides a good example:
The article concluded that it was a good game “and but for several nasty bobbles by the Millers’ infield the result might have been different.” This, of course, was a constant aspect of reporting on the games with the 25th and 24th Infantry baseball teams. Fort Missoula teams were always “the visitors.” The fact that they were soldiers and not permanent residents of Missoula makes that approach understandable.
Freeman’s 1908 team — made up of local Missoula residents — were likewise framed by the paper as the opposition. And the crowd, by energetically cheering for a W.M.F.C. rally in the 9th, viewed it the same way. Despite being a moment of imperfect racial integration, the game shows the limitations of belonging Black people in town were afforded. Even as community members living and working as fellow Missoula residents, the Black baseball players were still “the visitors.”
Yet at the same time, the paper’s commentary on the game in a separate piece on the last page of the May 18th issue still had positive, glowing words for Freeman.
Rarely were the other players on Freeman’s team mentioned by name, apart from providing the roster list which only included last names. The McIntosh Reds were “Sam Freeman’s team.”
The other two reported-on games in 1908 were both losses for the McIntosh Reds. The following week, they fell to the local Corvallis team, 6–2. In early June of 1908, the semi-professional Tacoma Tigers were stranded in Missoula after massive flooding in the region. They occupied their time playing against Missoula-area teams including the McIntosh Reds. The score was not revealed but the Reds were no match for the Tigers.
Despite the fact that Freeman was in his 40’s by 1909, he again compiled a McIntosh Red Apple team and in August was challenging the local Missoula Giants — a team he had already played with that year — to a game.
“We have a team that is the real thing,” Freeman was quoted as saying in the August 29th issue of the Missoulian. “We like the Giants but O, you Red Apple Team! That is the real thing and we are ready to prove it.”
It does not appear that the Giants took him up on his offer and no games involving the McIntosh Reds were reported on that year. In 1910, however, the McIntosh Reds went to Hamilton to play the local team there but lost by a whopping 20–0. That appears to be the last game the McIntosh Reds played.
Freeman, though, wasn’t done. On Sunday, July 3rd, he played catcher for the local Frenchtown team that beat Bonner 6–2. The Missoulian reported that the success of the Frenchtown team “lie(d) in (pitcher Ed) Kusel and Freeman, who held the Blackfoot sluggers helpless during the entire game.”
Ed Kusel had the year before pitched in the major leagues for the St. Louis Browns and, after a failed rehab assignment in the Northwest Leagues, played baseball for Bonner, Frenchtown and Missoula that Summer. Freeman would join Bonner later that year and play a few games with them as well.
Because the game was played the day before the 4th of July, a large crowd attended as there was not an active Missoula team playing that month. The Missoulian again lavished praise on Freeman, demonstrating how fondly he was regarded as a baseball player.
Freeman, though, was running into trouble starting in 1909. He had been arrested on June 24th and charged with third-degree assault, accused of having “terrified his family.” Freeman pleaded guilty but his sentence was suspended “on good behavior.”
He was named as a player in 1912 in a game organized by Missoula’s two newspapers at the time: the Missoulian and the Missoula Sentinel. It appears Freeman was playing for the Sentinel team — who lost — and his performance was called out. Though, for what seemed to be the first time, it was not in a positive way.
“The feature of the contest was Brown’s wildness and the fact that Sam Freeman failed to get anything that might be classed as a hit. Sam was supposed to be good for a homerun every time up, but he didn’t show,” the Missoulian reported.
In June of 1913, Freeman was again arrested for a family dispute in which the paper said his wife had called the police. He had been given a 10-day sentence but it was suspended “on the promise of Freeman to get out of the city.”
While there’s no way to know what brought on Freeman’s troubles at home, it is certainly the case that, unlike many of the White players he played with, Freeman never was seemingly able to secure financial stability in town. Like nearly all Black residents in Missoula, Freeman could not find work in jobs that weren’t service-related. In city directory listings, Freeman’s job titles varied — in 1903, his occupation was listed as “janitor,” in 1905, the directory identified his as a “laborer.” In 1907, he was a “cleaner.” In the 1910 census and the 1911 census, however, he was listed as a masseur at a hotel. An article in the Missoulian in 1912 reported that he was to assume a job as a janitor. And in 1913, his job designation was again “laborer.”⁸
In a legal summons printed in the Missoulian in January of 1915, it was reported that Freeman and his wife were loaned $750 in 1908 with an agreement to repay the loan three years later. No payments were ever made and the action declared that the mortgage that they put up as collateral would be foreclosed on. Freeman had left town years before and no response was given. In March of 1915, the property Freeman and his wife had owned was sold in a Sherriff’s sale.
The case speaks to the economic insecurity Freeman and his family faced in Missoula even though he was highly regarded as a baseball player. While feted for his athleticism, it wasn’t enough to penetrate through the tight racially-restrictive barriers of the local labor market.
At some point after leaving Missoula, Freeman moved to Wyoming. The 1930 census listed him as a manager of a hotel at Hot Springs State Park in Hot Springs, WY.⁹
In 1939, Freeman died at the Veteran’s Hospital in Cheyenne from arteriosclerosis. He was 70 years old.¹⁰
He had been living in Thermopolis up until his illness, according to an obituary printed in the Billings Gazette, and after his death he was buried at Custer National Cemetery. The obituary also referenced “acquaintances” who falsely claimed he was a veteran of the Spanish-American War. While he was a veteran of the 25th Infantry, his service expired before the war began. Also, sadly, the obituary made no mention of his days playing in Montana — which included Billings — as an all-around talented baseballer who played among White athletes in an age of segregation.
Missoula Remembers
Freeman wasn’t forgotten in Missoula. Many passages in the Missoulian including the 1929 reference to his 30+ foul ball plate appearance can be found in the paper’s archives.
In 1937, sports columnist Ray Rocene reminisced about Black baseball history in Missoula and specifically singled out Sam Freeman and the Buffalo Soldier baseball history.
“History of colored baseball strife here dates back to the days of the McIntosh Reds,” Rocene wrote. “Sam Freeman was a catching hero of Missoula baseballdom for many a year, and also worked behind the bat for Bonner and other nearby towns…The late Dick Taylor was a great ball player in the days when colored soldiers garrisoned Fort Missoula…Many are the stories told about those colored aces sparkling on the far northern diamonds.”
Up until at least 1952, Freeman’s name would be evoked in reminiscences of earlier Missoula baseball glory. In a recollection of the 1909 Missoula Giants baseball team, the paper pointed out that the team fielded several players with significant professional baseball experience. Yet these references don’t acknowledge the rarity Freeman represented as a Black man in a very White town playing among and against some of the best amateur and professional baseball players in the state. The fact that segregation prevented Freeman the opportunity to play professional baseball in the minor or major leagues was, likewise, not mentioned.
Sadly, local Missoula history can not tell us just how good Freeman was and on what level of play he could have competed. That shouldn’t stop us from remembering that he wowed crowds here in the Garden City in Missoula’s early years of baseball history.
Footnotes
¹Green, Dalbert, “History of the 25th Infantry Baseball Teams, 1894 to 1914,” in Nankivell, John, Buffalo Soldier Regiment: History of the United States 25th Infantry, 1869–1926, Republished 2001 by University of Nebraska Press; Bison Books Ed., p. 166
²U.S., Army, Register of Enlistments, 1798–1914; Samuel Freeman, 1890, accessed via ancestry.com
³1900 United States Federal Census; Year: 1900; Census Place: Helena Ward 7, Lewis and Clark, Montana; Roll: 913; Page: 4; Enumeration District: 0178; FHL microfilm: 1240913 accessed via ancestry.com
⁴ U.S., Army, Register of Enlistments, 1798–1914 February, 1891, 25th Infantry, accessed via ancestry.com
⁵Green, Dalbert, “History of the 25th Infantry Baseball Teams, 1894 to 1914,” in Nankivell, John, Buffalo Soldier Regiment: History of the United States 25th Infantry, 1869–1926, Republished 2001 by University of Nebraska Press; Bison Books Ed., p. 164
⁶Ibid.
⁷U.S., Army, Register of Enlistments, 1798–1914; Samuel Freeman, 1890, accessed via ancestry.com
⁸U.S., City Directories, 1822–1995; Missoula, Montana, City Directory (1903, 1905, 1907, 1911, 1913) & 1910 United States Federal Census; Census Place: Missoula Ward 1, Missoula, Montana; Roll: T624_834; Page: 1A; Enumeration District: 0065; FHL microfilm: 1374847 accessed via ancestry.com
⁹1930 United States Federal Census; Census Place: Hot Springs State Park, Hot Springs, Wyoming; Page: 3A; Enumeration District: 0012; FHL microfilm: 2342356 accessed via ancestry.com
¹⁰ Wyoming, U.S., Death Records, 1909–1969; Wyoming State Archives; Cheyenne, Wyoming; Death, Marriage, and Divorce Index Cards, Earliest Years up to 1967; accessed via ancestry.com
